The government has been told to “get a grip” of its nationwide testing programme following reports that Covid-19 tests provided to members of the public and care homes are regularly being lost.
People across the country have complained of waiting days or even weeks to receive their results, before being informed by the Covid helpline that authorities were unable to locate their test.
Separately, care home providers have said that entire bags of swabs have been lost following residential outbreaks, forcing staff and patients to retake their tests.
Some care homes claim that their tests were dumped by couriers and never delivered to the processing laboratories, while others say their swabs have repeatedly not been collected.
A Public Health England (PHE) source who works on tracing complex Covid-19 outbreaks told The Independent that these issues “have been happening for months”.
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In one instance, an entire hospice that had been struck down by an outbreak was forced to retest its staff and residents after all of its 60 swabs were lost, the source said.
Ms Ahmed said the NCA has received multiple calls throughout the pandemic from people who discovered entire bags of care home swabs left on the roadside.
She said these testing failings were endangering lives and were likely to “have contributed to the rising number of cases seen in certain communities across England”.
Courier services are largely to blame for the ongoing issues, according to Ms Ahmed and others.
One provider reported that a courier attempted to pick up tests from a care home at 1am, having waited days for the collection.
“The couriers have been a major issue from the start, to be honest,” the PHE source said.
“I had delayed couriers in April/May, absent couriers in June/July and then we started getting this issue where they seem to be at times dumping them, presumably once they’ve scanned the barcode so that they get paid and can perhaps go quickly to the next pick-up.”
Ms Ahmed said that couriers had routinely failed to pick up swab tests from care homes during the summer. “This was catastrophic for our providers,” she said. “The safety of our residents was in serious jeopardy.”
Courier services run by Royal Mail are responsible for the dispatching of Covid tests to care homes. These are then collected by eCourier, which sends them on to nearby testing centres. Once processing of the swabs has been completed, the tests are returned via both eCourier and Royal Mail Relay.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that the vast majority of courier collections are successful every week.
An eCourier spokesperson said: “Every test kit is important to us and we take our role in this important work very seriously. We have clear processes in place to ensure the safe transit of these materials to where they need to be. We pride ourselves on the high quality of the collection service that we provide.”
Other care homes have reported waiting more than five days to receive their test results, according to the NCA.
Carl Denis, manager of Aylsham Manor residential home in Norwich, told The Independent that a “handful” of tests had been lost during the pandemic but said: “Our main gripe is the delay it takes to hear back from the authorities [for results].”
“We’ve often waited a week to get the results back,” he said. “Some have come back positive, but if that’s taken that long, it means the virus could have spread like wildfire and we’d have been the none the wiser. Thankfully that hasn’t happened, but the risk is there.
“You live in fear that you might have a positive which leads to an outbreak. All the staff get very worried as they think once it’s in, it’s going to be a big worry. It’s led to tears and impacted their mental health.”
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The DHSC said that it takes all incidents of this nature “very seriously”. A spokesperson added: “If the National Care Homes Association or any other party is made aware of incidents of this nature, they should raise them to NHS Test and Trace for immediate action.”
Members of the public have similarly told The Independent that they never received the results of their tests.
Many took a test after being urged to do so by contact callers or the Covid-19 app, and self-isolated accordingly, only to be later informed that their results could not be located.
Hannah Brown, a young professional who lives in London, said that she and five of her friends all took a test in mid-October after coming into close contact with someone who had contracted the virus.
She said that only half the group ended up receiving their results, having taken their tests at different testing locations across the capital.
“Clearly the fact that three tests from different testing locations went missing means that this is not a distinct issue,” Ms Brown said.
“What’s scary is the lack of a result has meant the people we interacted with before we began our 14-day isolation have not been isolating and, if we did have Covid, would have been spreading the virus further and further, potentially to vulnerable people.
“It’s made us lose faith in the system and if I got symptoms again I would think twice about getting tested. If there are week-long delays and lost results, the UK has no chance of preventing the spread of the virus.”
Others from across the country have shared similar experiences with The Independent.
Tom Jeffcot, a student at the University of Exeter, said he developed mild symptoms at the start of September and got a test “out of precaution”. He says there was no confirmation that his test had been lost, even though he called and emailed the Covid-19 helpline “at least eight times”.
“They said they would push it along and send it to me confirming there were no issues with my details or anything like that, but I never got it despite all the communication and so assumed it was lost or something to that effect,” he said.
Delvene Pitt, a children’s entertainer from London, took a test on 22 October and went into self-isolation after coming into close contact with a friend who had tested positive.
“I was told it would take two to three days for the results to come back, and if not, then call 119,” she said. “The results didn’t come so I called the number. The person on the phone said that they would investigate it and it could take a further five days.
“Five days later, still nothing. So I called again and they said if it’s already been investigated they can’t reinvestigate. They said I just need to self-isolate for the 14 days.
“I wasn’t able to work – I’m self employed – so it was another thing to add [to my worries]. And literally as soon as I get out of self-isolation – lockdown.”
Ms Pitt later told The Independent that she had finally received her result – a month after first taking her test.
Earlier this month, a member of the government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) said that half of all positive cases in the UK are not being identified.
“It’s like trying to control the epidemic with one hand tied behind our back,” said Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh.
Justin Madders, the shadow health minister, told The Independent it was “a failing of basic competence that this far down the line we are still hearing of problems like this, especially when issues have been flagged up and not acted on”.
“We aren’t going to beat this virus unless we get infection rates down, and that won’t happen unless people self-isolate when they are supposed to and are properly supported to do so,” he said.
Munira Wilson, MP for Twickenham and the health and social care spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, urged the government to “get a grip on their failing test and trace service”.
“People around the country are doing the right thing and getting tested if they have Covid-19 symptoms,” she told The Independent. “It should not be too much to ask that they actually get their results, and get them fast. This unacceptable failure is putting lives and livelihoods at risk.”
The DHSC said: “NHS Test and Trace is processing tests at an unprecedented scale – we have distributed over 12 million tests to care homes in the UK as part of asymptomatic testing for staff and residents.
“Over 100,000 tests are successfully sent to our labs every day by care homes in the UK by courier collection. The vast majority of people using NHS Test and Trace experience no problems, but we take all concerns seriously and act to address test or collection issues urgently once raised.”
